Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche's own admissions about FBI negligence in the Epstein case landed in federal court today, hours before his Senate confirmation vote.
Survivors' attorneys filed the letter Wednesday before Judge Ryon McCabe in the Southern District of Florida in the case Doe 1 et al. v. United States. The filing suggests the survivors believe Blanche admitted wrongdoing by the FBI in a rush to deflect responsibility for failures in the Epstein case.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote on Blanche's confirmation Thursday morning.
The letter cites Blanche's statements at a July 16 meeting with survivors at Justice Department headquarters as grounds to amend the complaint. Plaintiffs said they were "seeking this relief in light of acting Attorney General Todd Blanche's very recent statements to survivors."
During that meeting, ABC News reported, survivors described Blanche's conduct as "dissatisfactory and contrived" when he dismissed survivor Maria Farmer, telling her that her "call [to the FBI about EpsteinI] was made in 1996," "the case was handled improperly before 2007" and "you got screwed over by the FBI but I cannot fix the FBI's lack of investigation."
Those admissions, the filing shows, now sit in a federal court record the day before senators decide Blanche's fate.
The underlying lawsuit, filed in September 2024, represents 33 women suing the U.S. government under the Federal Tort Claims Act — a law that allows citizens to sue the federal government for negligence — for the FBI's failures in the Epstein case. They are seeking more than $100 million.
The complaint alleges the FBI received its first credible tip in 1996, when Maria Farmer reported that Epstein and Maxwell had sexually abused her and her sister. The FBI did nothing.
It also alleges the FBI ignored child sexual abuse material seized in a 2005 raid of Epstein's Palm Beach mansion, failed to interview victims whose names and phone numbers it already had, and allowed Epstein to judge a beauty pageant in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 2007 while under active investigation.
Epstein survivor Annie Farmer, who testified at Ghislaine Maxwell's criminal trial, said she left the meeting convinced senators should vote against Blanche, ABC News reported. She called him "abrasive, condescending, and intentionally noncommittal to survivors."
Annie Farmer said his evasiveness felt like "a deliberate attempt to claim the Attorney General's office is powerless in this matter."
"The FBI has the power to open investigations, not me," Blanche told those assembled inside the meeting, MS NOW reported.
"I'm just the attorney general," he added.
The meeting only happened because Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), whose vote Blanche needs to clear the Judiciary Committee, demanded it as a condition of his support, ABC News reported. As of Wednesday afternoon, Tillis had still not committed to voting for Blanche's confirmation.
That vote is scheduled for Thursday morning.
